Chapter Two
Waking happened all at once. No gentle easing into consciousness, no soft cocoon of dreams cushioning the landing.
Clint just jerked awake on the couch, one arm flailing for a blanket that had apparently abandoned him during the night.
He made a sound somewhere between a groan and a baby cow in distress. Not pretty.
Mabel, possessing all the compassion of a wet sock, pressed her backside firmly onto his chest and looked him in the eye, purring with the intensity of a diesel engine.
“Morning,” he muttered. She didn’t dignify him with a meow. Instead, she pressed her paws deeper into his sternum.
His lower back felt like someone had replaced his spine with rusted rebar. Every attempt to turn his head sent lightning down his shoulder.
Morning meant the wolf would need checking. Probably needed water, maybe food if it could manage solids. Clint pushed himself upright, knees popping like bubble wrap, and turned toward where he’d left his patient.
But the wolf was gone.
Clint blinked twice, still groggy, before his brain connected the dots. Where the wolf had been, sprawled out in a mess of blood and shredded towels, a man lay instead.
Completely naked.
Not even a decorative throw pillow for modesty.
Clint’s brain stuttered to a complete stop. He sat up, ignoring Mabel’s protest. His feet hit the rug. Knees protested, loudly. Apparently, wrestling wolves in the middle of the night didn’t count as cardio and absolutely counted against his warranty.
One slow, careful step at a time, he approached the stranger on his floor. Very Naked man on his floor. So much for hoping last night was a weird stress dream.
Morning light played across skin that ranged from pale gold to deeper bronze where the sun had touched it.
Dark hair fell across his face, longer than current fashion but somehow exactly right for the sharp angles of his jaw.
Stubble shadowed his cheeks, not quite a beard but enough to make Clint wonder how it would feel against his palm.
The guy looked…solid, his shoulders and back cut in lines and curves, like maybe he spent his free time wrestling trees for fun.
Built didn’t even cover it. That chest had to be at least fifty percent pectoral muscle, and the rest was evenly distributed between arms that could break a person in half and thighs that should be illegal.
He wasn’t even going to look farther down. No need to embarrass himself by ogling a man who probably had better things to do than wake up to find himself being stared at like a prize-winning bull.
Still, Clint hovered.
The body on the floor was breathing, chest rising steadily. No gashes, no broken limbs, nothing left of the mess Clint had fixed up last night. Strips of bandages lay scattered like party confetti, and the splint now looked as useful as a wet napkin.
Maybe the shifting did most of the heavy lifting. Maybe it needed a jump start, a little human ingenuity to get the ball rolling before nature took over. Either way, if he’d left the guy out there bleeding, it would’ve been a different body in his yard this morning.
He nudged a towel aside with his foot. The man’s face was turned toward him now, one cheek pressed against the hardwood. Lips parted. Clint could now see the angles of his jaw and the way his eyelashes cast shadows on his cheeks.
Beautiful was the word. Not that he’d say that out loud.
A low exhale betrayed consciousness. The eyelids fluttered open, revealing amber eyes with the same focus as last night, that unsettling, intelligent awareness that made Clint feel like he was being sized up, even now.
No aggression. No panic. Just the calm assessment of someone who’d been through this before and was already wondering how much worse it’d get.
The man’s gaze darted around, taking in the room, the blood, the couch where Clint had apparently lost a prize fight to a cat before falling asleep. No sign of confusion. He just looked…tired.
“Good. You’re alive,” Clint said, voice flat. “We can skip the part where I explain why you’re naked on my floor.”
A huff of air. Almost a laugh. “Where am I?”
“Earth,” Clint replied, folding his arms. “It’s Tuesday morning. You bled everywhere, by the way.” The wolf had been a patient. The man was an unknown variable with agency and strength.
The man fought to sit up. Even with the shift and the healing, he moved slowly. The blanket slipped. Clint didn’t look away. Whoever could go human again after all that trauma probably wasn’t shy, anyway.
“Don’t move. You’ll hurt yourself.” How? Clint wasn’t sure since the guy had fully healed.
Another huff. Voice rough. “Tried to heal, but…”
He trailed off, as if waking up naked and surrounded by a triage scene was an everyday inconvenience.
Clint stared. Not the polite, doctorly kind of stare. The kind you gave to a car wreck in your own driveway. “You’re supposed to heal when you shift. Or so I’ve heard.”
The man gave him a look that could only be described as “yeah, genius.” Then he braced himself on his palms. All that muscle looked good in motion. If Clint had a body like that, he’d never wear a shirt.
Eyes locked onto him, honey-colored and sincere. “Thanks.” The word barely made it out, voice cracked from overuse or pain or god knew what. “You a vet?”
Clint’s eyebrows lifted. “You a wolf?”
The man’s mouth twitched.
“Clint,” he offered. “I’m the idiot who dragged you inside last night.”
“Bayne.” His voice had smoothed out some, less gravel and more whiskey.
“Nice to meet you, Bayne,” Clint replied. “Though next time maybe try using the front door. And maybe…clothes.” He flapped his hand around like he was brushing dust off of air.
There was a breath held too long, eyes flicking to Clint’s, then that unsure curl of his mouth like he was acknowledging the absurdity.
Grabbing the throw blanket from the floor, Clint tossed it in Bayne’s general direction, trying not to notice the way the morning light caught the planes of his chest. “Just lie still. You lost a lot of blood.”
Bayne ignored the advice, pushing himself up to sitting with a grunt that spoke of healing that went bone-deep but might not quite be complete. Muscles moved under skin in ways that made Clint’s mouth go dry. Even wincing, the man moved with a grace that suggested violence held in careful check.
The blanket pooled around his waist, which helped exactly nothing because now Clint’s brain was dealing with the V of muscle that disappeared beneath terry cloth.
A long stretch of silence followed, punctuated only by the phone vibrating on the side table and Clint’s own sense of growing awkwardness. The guy was watching him. Not watching. Studying. Taking in every exhausted detail, right down to the wrinkled scrubs and the cat hair clinging to his shirt.
Tension coiled up inside Clint, twisting somewhere low in his gut. Maybe it was just him, reading too much into the presence of a beautiful, half-naked man who’d spent the night on his floor.
The phone buzzed again.
He checked it. The Clinic.
His living room looked like a butcher shop, and he had two hours to figure out what to do with a naked shifter who may or may not have enemies looking for him. Two hours to process whatever he was feeling right now. It wasn’t enough time.
He stared at the phone then at Bayne. There was no explanation for this that wouldn’t sound completely insane. “Hey, sorry I’m late. I was playing supernatural EMT. Yeah, the patient’s fine now. Turned into a hot guy. No, I’m not having a breakdown.”
He was definitely having a breakdown.
“Seriously. I have a plumbing emergency. My whole bathroom is flooded.” The lie came out smooth, practiced from years of covering for hangovers and bad dates, though never for this. “Need to wait for the plumber. Can you reschedule my morning appointments?”
Janet’s sigh could’ve powered a small wind turbine. She launched into a lecture about responsibility and Mrs. Henderson’s poodle’s anxiety medication, but Clint barely heard it. Bayne was trying to stand, and the blanket was losing the battle with gravity.
“Gotta go,” Clint said, hanging up mid-sentence.
The cat appeared then, cautiously stalking toward Bayne. Her whiskers twitched as she sniffed him, before her tail puffed to three times its normal size, a furry exclamation point announcing her indignation at this invasion of her territory.
“That’s Mabel,” Clint said. “She owns the place. I just pay the mortgage.”
Bayne extended one hand slowly, letting the cat conduct her investigation. After a long moment, Mabel deigned to rub her head against his fingers, purring like a small engine.
Traitor.
“She likes you,” Clint observed, trying not to feel betrayed by his own cat. “She usually hates everyone.”
“Cats recognize good people,” Bayne said, which was patently false, but his slight smile made arguing seem pointless. “Hey, beautiful.”
“So.” Clint peeled a blood-streaked towel off the armchair. “Care to tell me who or what did this to you?”
Bayne opened his mouth, then seemed to think better of it. “I honestly don’t remember.”
That wasn’t the answer Clint expected. “You don’t remember…anything?”
A shake of his head. “I remember running… Trees, the ground, pain in my leg. After that, it’s a blank until I woke up here.”
“Someone did that to you,” Clint said. Not a question. Those wounds hadn’t been accidental. “The marks on your side looked like electrical burns.”
Bayne’s hand moved unconsciously to his ribs, fingers finding the spot where those strange marks had been. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Which raised about twelve more questions Clint probably shouldn’t ask. Getting involved with Bayne’s drama would be spectacularly stupid.
Then again, he’d already crossed that line when he’d dragged the injured wolf inside.
“Whatever you did to get in that state,” Clint observed, “maybe not do it again.”
The man actually smiled. Briefly, then it was gone as fast as it arrived.
“You need water,” Clint said instead of asking any of the dozen or so questions crowding his throat. “And food. And probably clothes.”
“Clothes would be good.” A hint of humor crept into Bayne’s voice despite everything. “Unless you want to keep staring.”
Heat crawled up Clint’s neck. “I wasn’t staring. It was a medical assessment.”
“If you say so, Doc.”
Turned abruptly toward the stairs, Clint mumbled, “I’ll dig something up,” as the heat crawling up his neck threatened to catch his face on fire.
His bedroom closet yielded sweatpants, which would probably be too damn small. He yanked a T-shirt from his drawer and inspected it. “He wears this and your concentration will be obliterated.”
Clint tossed the shirt over his shoulder, because he clearly loved torturing himself.
Christ, he needed coffee. And therapy. And possibly a new career that didn’t involve naked shifters in his living room.
When he returned, Bayne had managed to stand, the blanket wrapped around his waist like a toga. He accepted the clothes with a nod that might’ve been gratitude or just acknowledgment that walking around naked wasn’t sustainable.
“Bathroom's down the hall,” Clint offered then realized Bayne probably needed more than just clothes. “There are clean towels if you want to shower. And I’ll make coffee.”
“Coffee sounds perfect.” He bunched the clothes in his hand. “And, Doc? Really. Thank you. Most humans would’ve called the cops. Or animal control.”
“Yeah, well…” Clint shrugged, feeling guilty that he’d almost done just that. “I’ve always been bad at making sensible choices.”
Something shifted in Bayne’s expression.
“Guess that makes two of us,” he said then headed for the bathroom with movements that were almost steady.
Clint waited until he heard the shower running before letting himself collapse against the kitchen counter. His life had been simple yesterday. Predictable. Boring, maybe, but boring was safe.
Now he had a shifter in his shower and blood on his floors and absolutely no idea what happened next.
Mabel jumped onto the counter, fixing him with a look that suggested she had opinions about all of this.
“Don’t start,” he told her, reaching for the coffee maker. “I know it’s stupid. I know I should have called someone. I know this is going to end badly.”
She meowed, which sounded suspiciously like agreement.
Coffee helped, marginally. The familiar routine of measuring grounds and water gave his hands something to do while his brain tried to process the last twelve hours. By the time the machine finished brewing, he could almost pretend this was normal.
Just another day. With a werewolf in his shower.
Completely normal.